


Service With a Smile

by AnonymousMink



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Ecco POV, F/M, Missing Scene, One Shot, Pining, Proto-Harley!Ecco, Rated for swearing, mad love, short fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 04:43:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14536911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousMink/pseuds/AnonymousMink
Summary: “Jeremiah!” His name came out in a gasp, fear squeezing the air from her lungs as Ecco scrambled across the room. The door swinging shut behind her with a thud.She had one job. One fucking job.How many times was she going to fail him?—-Ecco finds Jeremiah after he gets dosed by Jerome’s laughing gas. Missing scene 04x18, written because the author is weak.





	Service With a Smile

**Author's Note:**

> A little one shot I wrote after getting a lovely anon message asking me to write Jeremiah/Ecco :-P I hope y’all like it, I’m literally guessing wildly about Ecco’s character from what little we’ve seen so far but hey ho! (And no worries regular readers, I promise I’ll get back to our regularly scheduled Harley/Jeromeker fic asap :-P)
> 
> If you do enjoy I hope you consider leaving a comment - they make my day! :-D

“Jeremiah!” His name came out in a gasp, fear squeezing the air from her lungs as Ecco scrambled across the room. The door swinging shut behind her with a thud.

She had one job. _One fucking job._

How many times was she going to fail him?

She still wasn’t fully over what had… _happened_. A low ache taking root in her skull from the blow she’d been struck, slowing her down as she tried to put the pieces back together, to reassemble herself after a mad man had picked her brain apart like it was a badly knitted sweater.

But all that was supposed to be over now. It was supposed to be _done_.  
Guilt weighed her down, making her sluggish as she fell to her knees beside Jeremiah, trying to focus even as her brain _screamed_. A few words and she’d been ready to do whatever Tetch said, ready to turn against the one man in the world she…

No. Now was not the time. _Focus Ecco._

She pulled herself together sharply, her mind was her own again. She could help him now. Please God, if anyone was listening, let her be able to help him.

“Jeremiah, talk to me!” He was on the floor, doubled over and wheezing as she reached for him. His eyes screwed tight as he coughed, something almost like a laugh tearing loose from his throat as the lights overhead flickered and flared.

Her hands shook as she searched for the cause of his distress, betraying her even as she told herself she was calm. She could do this. His skin was ice cold and paler than she’d ever seen it, hair in disarray as her stomach tightened convulsively in fear.

Blocked airway. Esophageal injury. _Poison_.

“Not… exactly…” he wheezed, hand working at his throat as the coughing fell off at last. Breath coming easier for them both.

He was speaking. Coherent. _Alive_.

She drank in his voice like she was dying of thirst, heart crashing as she reached for his shirt, beating so fast she barely registered the words. Fingers trembling she loosened his top button, helping him lean against the wall as she fought to seem composed.

He opened his eyes.

They were… he was…

She hadn’t noticed it in her rush, ascribing his pallor to the attack, but now… His skin was white, not just pale, not just sickly, but true _white_. And his eyes… the perfect blue-green she knew better than her own had changed completely. Sharpened into something almost inhuman, light and bright but ringed with darkness.

“What happened?” She whispered, forgetting herself entirely as she sat back on her heels. Her hand still half raised towards his almost familiar features.

“A gift,” he gestured to the box on the opposite table, the one she should have seen before. The one she should have stopped from ever reaching him. “From my late brother. A rather… illuminating one.”

Jerome. _Of course._

Rage gripped her, strangling her voice in her throat as she looked at the twisted jack in the box. If he’d hurt Jeremiah, if he’d even… her hands fisted, nails digging deep enough to draw blood as she drew in a breath. If he’d hurt Jeremiah she swore she’d find a way to bring Jerome back from the dead just to kill him all over again.

Slowly this time. With _feeling_.

Jeremiah didn’t seem to share her rage, he was already rising, dusting off his knees with a reserved smile before offering her his hand. She took it silently, trying to keep her face impassive to hide the rush of her heart as he helped her to her feet. His palm cool and calloused beneath her fingers.

“Better?” He asked, one eyebrow hooking jovially, like she was the one who’d been attacked.

She nodded mutely, face heating as she trailed after him across the room. She’d have time to berate herself later, to rage and roar and wallow in her own guilt, now she had to focus up. Cosmetically he might have changed but he was still Jeremiah, _her_ Jeremiah.

Her saviour.

And she had a job to do.

The smile was still there, the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth as he rifled through his blueprints. Nodding to himself as he found the one he wanted, the one for the new generator, and pulled it to the top of the pile. His fingers flexing like white spiders as he smoothed down the edges. Elegant. That was the word for him, effortlessly so, like he didn’t even realize…

“Ecco my dear,” his voice pulled her from her haze, perfectly still and calm as he perused the page, “my brothers death has shown me one thing very clearly.”

She stayed silent, stepping close to his side as his gaze flickered back and forth, knowing he’d continue when he was ready. She’d always respected that about him. Now if she could just stop staring…

He caught her gaze and she stopped breathing entirely, something unbearably beautiful about his new eyes even as they cut through her like a scalpel. Like he could see her every triumph, her every failure, every thought and foible and accepted it all.

Accepted _her_.

“This town needs a better class of criminal.”

She blinked, taking a half step back at his sudden shift in priorities. Scrambling to keep up even as she accepted it without a thought.

“Jer- Mr Valeska?” She caught herself on the edge of informality, confusion crinkling her brow. It was all well and good calling his name in the heat of the moment but his face said business and she understood the difference.

“Hmm perhaps,” he seemed to give her knee-jerk response more consideration than it deserved, lips pursing ever so slightly as his gaze swept around the room, “but then again perhaps not. Mister J, yes, that will do for now I think.”

“Of course, Mister J,” she snapped to attention, accepting the change without complaint. It was easier to think with the formalities in place, easier to remember herself. Each inch of space between them helping her keep her unruly emotions in check. Kept them from drowning her.

She’d always felt too much, craved too much, it was her weakness. How many days and months and years had she spent locking the feelings down? Determined to funnel them into something useful. Something _worthy_.

To prove that Jeremiah had been right when he’d saved her all those years ago, back when they were little more than children…

Her back straightened, chin up as she stood resolutely waiting for his next words. Perfect porcelain as she stepped back into her role. His constant shadow.

His echo.

“I’ve seen the future,” his smile was back, that restrained tug at the corner of his mouth that spoke of a grand idea in progress, “and I feel I must warn you, I will not be able to create the world I’ve seen without first harnessing a destruction unlike any this city has known. I intend to pull it down and rebuild it in my image. Are you with me?”

“Always.”

She didn’t have to think, she’d never had to. Jeremiah… Mister J… he was a visionary. A _genius_. And whatever path he walked, no matter how bloody, she would follow without question.

Even if that meant walking straight into the mouth of hell itself, she’d do it with a smile.


End file.
